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Citizenship Canada says Calgary welcomed 1,164 new Canadians from more than 100 countries over the past month, officials say.

That's four times as many people who became Canadian citizens in the city than in April, 2013.

Ottawa says the increase is due to recent efforts to make the citizenship program more efficient.

And proposed changes to the Canadian Citizenship Act will reduce wait times even more by streamlining the decision process, said a written release from the office of Citizenship Minister Chris Alexander.

“It is expected that those changes will bring the average processing time for citizenship applications down to under one year and that the current backlog will be reduced by more than 80 per cent by 2015-2016,” the release said.

Since 2006, Canada has taken in an average of 250,000 newcomers per year — the highest sustained level of immigration in the country’s history, Ottawa said.

The demand for citizenship has increased correspondingly by 30 per cent.